The 6 Most Important Women in Computer History

I can not help. Every few months, I spent several days digging in the archives web obsessive about a specific topic. This frenzy months of curiosity comes from the ENIAC, the first electronic computer generalpurpose.

Short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, ENIAC celebrates the 65th anniversary of its creation February 14, 1946. As I started digging deeper into its origins, operation and demise in 1955, I discovered that most of the ENIAC programmers were women.

I switched gears and began studying the role women have played in the history of computing and technology, and what do you do? The names of women everywhere. I love history and I'm embarrassed to admit that I had no frickin idea.

So in honor of the Month Women's History, which begins in March, I give up public opinion in favor of identifying the six most important woman in the history of our favorite hobby. I bet the size and scope of their work will surprise you.

Ada Lovelace: The only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, the addict to mathematics has an interest in the work of Charles Babbage, and is widely credited with writing the first computer program between 1842 and 1843, and recognize the ability of computers beyond the mere number crunching.

Jean Bartik: Born as Betty Jean Jennings Bartik was one of the first ENIAC programmers, the supercomputer of the army. When the Army introduced ENIAC to the public, it introduces the inventors (Dr. John Mauchly and J. Prespes Eckert) but not female programmers.

Roberta Williams: Carol Shaw, who made the 3D Tic-Tac-Toe in 1979, known as the first female game designer, Roberta Williams, but the design work for Sierra On-Line adventure game series in 1980 makes it easily the most influential woman in the history of the game designers.

Radia Perlman: Known as the "mother of the Internet," Radia is famous for his invention of a Spanning-Tree Protocol, a protocol that ensures loop-free topology for the bridge Ethernet LAN with automatic backup of pathing.

Grace Hopper: the commonly recognized as the ancestor of hardware-independent programming language, Hopper is also a developer of COBOL, the first man to develop the code compiler, and the creator of the term "debugging". Navy USS Hopper, named after him.

Frances Allen: A pioneer in the field of compiler optimization and parallelization and permanent IBM employee, Allen was the first woman to win Turing Award, which is basically a Nobel prize in science.

As you might imagine, this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you think I’m kidding, check matters out for yourself. Like me, you’re going to be surprised again and again.

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NAS Box vs. Windows Home Server

Traditionally, there have been two different routes to reach are always in stock at home: extremely powerful (but expensive, noisy and difficult to maintain) or platform network storage server typically low power (NAS) boxes. However, the distinction between NAS boxes and servers full narrowed. We recently tested faster NAS boxes filled with features such as server, and shipping companies are now smaller, cheaper servers with Microsoft Home Server platform news. This month, we compare the HP MediaSmart Server EX475 Home (discussed in the February issue) to our favorite NAS box, the QNAP TS-109 Pro (see http://tinyurl.com/yomys5) to determine whether a server or NAS device is the best candidate to meet our network storage.

round 1

Performance is a difficult category to judge because the NAS boxes we've tested varied widely in file transfer speeds. While the TS-109 Pro QNAP supply reference results that are competitive with those of a dedicated server machine, we also tested the NAS boxes that are slower than an old school sneakernet. In other words, all the NAS boxes are created equal. Home Server boxes, on the other hand, must meet a minimum, and from the Home Server uses the standard x86 platform, the sky is the limit when it accelerate. Although we are sure sellers ship undersized Home Server platform, the worst of cases, these devices are still much better than the worst case, the NAS box.
WINNER: Home Server

 

HOME SERVER HP MediaSmart EX475
$750 (includes two 500GB drives),
www.hp.com

round 2

PRICE The breakdown: HP MediaSmart EX475 costs $ 750 and comes with two 500 GB disk drives The QNAP TS-109 is only $ 330, but to achieve the same amount of storage, you need to buy a terabyte drive NAS device is single array, which adds another $ 300 - $ 350 This makes it a little cheaper, but the lack of opportunities for expansion should also be considered MediaSmart can double its capacity by two other relatively cheap $ 100 500 GB disk.
WINNER: TIE

round 3

Using a low-power embedded processor instead of a power-hungry desktop CPUs, using even the fastest NAS box, much less juice than a Home Server. In our tests, taken MediaSmart around 80W, while the QNAP unit from just 12W when running the same kind of activities.
WINNER: BOX NAS

round 4

Features As we have tested some NAS devices that include backup software on the secondary market, it can not be compared with Home Server rich feature set. Home Server backup process is transparent: just install a small TSR (TSR) on your PC and the server will automatically wake up the nightly backup. Media sharing is even easier: Dump your music, videos and photos into the appropriate folders and Home Server will automatically flow to any UPnP enabled device as a dedicated streaming box, an Xbox 360 or PS3. And Home Server includes its own dynamic DNS service enabled, which makes it easy to connect to your Home Server even when you are away. While some NAS boxes include a similar feature that is almost always a kind of warning.
WINNER: Home Server

round 5

Home potpourri server architecture includes a powerful API that encourages the development of compatible third-party tools and applications. In fact, end users already have a main server support for your favorite services and devices. For example, plug-ins allow you to synchronize your photo collection on Flickr and share your multimedia files with TiVo boxes. In addition, Home Server monitors the health of all network equipment, alerting when a machine has not been saved, the lack of recent virus definitions, or a hard drive no. NAS boxes simply do not. If one server folder of the primary account can be configured for redundancy of data, these devices only softer look.
WINNER: HOME SERVER

 

NAS BOX QNAP TS-109 Pro
$330 (w/o drive), www.qnap.com

And the Winner Is...

A NAS box, for the most part just sits there. Although it may contain features such as streaming or a BitTorrent client, it is primarily a bucket of data that is on your network. Home Server unit offers the same features as in a garden-variety NAS, and is available at a price, but it also includes backup transparent, integrated media streaming and idiot-proof data redundancy, which makes our preferred solution. Remember though that the advent of Home Server devices will push the price down to NAS boxes in the coming months. While a NAS device with a decent cost TB of storage space of nearly $ 700 today, we would be shocked if prices remain higher than a year, and it can completely change the value proposition for the class system network storage as a whole. Read More...

Review; Falcon Northwest Mach V

Sandy Bridge and GeForce GTX 580 appear

 

Falcon Northwest’s new Mach V case gets vertical.

Who came up with the concept of a vertically oriented motherboard that positions the graphics cards upright so the tremendous heat they generate vents straight up?
It’s hard to say who fi rst had the idea—we’ve seen cases that feature this design, and the Main- Gear Shift PC that we reviewed in June 2010 took the same approach. But Falcon Northwest claims it had a stake in the original idea and has even provided time-stamped images of its prototypes of the inverted design from 2002. That certainly predates the aforementioned examples, as well as Voodoo’s luxurious but elusive Omen.
So, why the delay in fi nally getting a vertical design out? Falcon says exorbitant tooling costs prevented its prototype case from going into production, but the company is happy to finally have an inverted design out now.
The new Mach V’s case is an improved version of Silverstone’s Raven RV01 (the same vendor Falcon says it worked with on a vertical case years ago). The customizations include a 10cm fan on the back of the motherboard tray to cool the voltage regulators. Falcon says airfl ow testing also showed that the GPUs needed far more of a push from the 18cm fan at the bottom of the case and thus a baffl e is used to shunt all of the air directly to the GPUs. Falcon also decided to locate the radiator for the Acetek cooler low and added an inlet so cool exterior air is sucked in rather than hot air hitting it on the way out.

 

Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked to 1,750MHz, on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.

The end result is an amazingly quiet machine considering the performance punch the Mach V provides. Much of that punch comes from Intel’s brand-spanking-new Core i7-2600K chip. Overclocked from its stock 3.4GHz to 4.7GHz, the Sandy Bridge CPU is paired up with not one, but two Kick Ass award–winning GeForce GTX 580 cards. Falcon keeps storage fairly simple with a 1TB Western Digital Black drive and a 240GB OCZ Revo X2. The latter isn’t a typical SSD, but rather four small SSDs RAIDed together and running off PCI Express and using the killer SandForce controllers. Its specs purport stupid-fast speeds in the 700MB/s range, and it certainly felt that damned fast in our tests.
In raw performance, we wondered how the Falcon would stack up against the army of Core i7-980X hexa-cores and tri-SLI and even quad- SLI configs we’ve tested of late. The Mach V did surprisingly well, considering that we’re talking about four cores taking on six.
Normally, Falcon Northwest comes into the room and tap, tap, freaking slays bodies, but this confi guration of the Mach V comes in at $4,295. That’s damn near budget pricing for one of its rigs. It’s also about $3,000–$6,000 less than some of the super-rigs we’ve had in our Lab. The closest competitor was the similarly priced Velocity Micro Edge Z55 that we reviewed in December. Equipped with a 3.2GHz Core i7-970 hexa-core (overclocked to 4.3GHz), it was nearly the equivalent of the Falcon in application performance thanks to its six cores. But the price of that hexa-core meant less RAM and lower-end GPUs than the Mach V off ers. And, no surprise, the Mach V’s GTX 580s absolutely spank the pair of GTX 460s in the Edge Z55.
Overall, the Mach V is a solidly designed, solidly spec’d machine with no holes that we can see. Yes, it might lack the sex appeal of the ubermachines we’ve encountered lately, but it’s a lot more down to earth in pricing, too. Read More...

Rocketfish 2.4GHz Indoor/Outdoor Speaker

Take your music outside on the cheap ..........

Wireless audio systems are great for streaming music from room to room, but they’re practically essential when it comes to playing your tunes outdoors. Best Buy’s private-label Rocketfi sh system delivers an innovative solution with a budget price tag of just $185.

The system consists of a 2.4GHz wireless transceiver that you connect to an analog sound source (a PC, A/V receiver, MP3 player, Squeezebox, etc.), and a weatherized speaker with a wireless receiver. The transceiver requires A/C power, but the speaker can run on either A/C power or eight C-cell batteries (not included). We ran the Rocketfi sh wirelessly for 11 hours and 45 minutes before exhausting a fresh set of alkalines, but the speaker will also run on—and recharge—eight 5,000mAh NiMH C-cells (those batteries cost about $5 a piece).

A single speaker operates in mono, but you can pair two speakers to one transceiver to achieve stereo. You can also send music to additional locations around the house—the system maxes out at nine clients—by installing additional transceivers and speakers. Each transceiver can act as both a wireless receiver (receiving music from a master hub connected to a music source) and a wireless transmitter (sending music to a wireless speaker). Best Buy sells additional passive transceivers for $60 each (supply your own self-powered speakers) and transceivers with integrated amplifi ers for $100 each (supply your own passive speakers). This would make for an inexpensive multiroom audio system, although every room would play the same source music.

Best Buy claims unobstructed wireless range of 164 feet for the transceiver and outdoor speaker, and we found the system capable of reaching the speaker at 142 feet with one exterior wall between the source and client. Additional obstacles—including people walking into the signal path—rapidly reduced that range.

The amp inside the speaker is only borderline adequate for wide-open spaces, delivering just fi ve watts to an eight-ohm tweeter and 22 watts to a four-ohm woofer. It’s good enough for background music, but a raucous party would likely drown it out. The speaker itself produces relatively fl at, unexciting audio, and it distorts early as you ramp up the volume. Pushing the “bass” button on the back of the speaker substantially boosts the bottom register, which we very much appreciated—low-end frequencies just don’t travel far.

The speaker cabinet is fabricated from lightweight plastic, and while Best Buy claims its “weather resistant speaker design withstands the elements,”we have to wonder what would happen if hard-driving rain—or an errant water hose—forced water into the large vents on either side of the cylindrical cabinet. We also found ourselves setting the cabinet on concrete surfaces with care, fearing that the thin rim on which it rests would fracture if we dropped it.

If you have an abundance of cash, no outdoor speaker we’ve ever heard has been able to touch the exceptional Soundcast OutCast we reviewed in our April 2008 issue (you’ll fi nd our review online at http://bit.ly/cx8GKF), but that system’s $800 street price puts it in an entirely different class. Best Buy delivers a very solid value for the price here, and you can expand it by purchasing relatively inexpensive add-on components. Read More...

Review; CyberPower LAN Party EVO Mini

Can a dual-core take on a quad-core? Yes, it can .....
It 'a good mind to think like, or a Silverstone SG07 is just the beginning of the cold? SG07 We suspect it is this cold. After all, the platform that the Cyber-used applications on the LAN Mini EVO seems to be the same chassis, we used our "Wee-Ass Kicking Machine"

As with the WAKM, the SG07 is limited to a single PCI-E slot and a Mini-ITX board, but that does not mean the CyberPower and WAKM are the same. In fact, could not be more different.

LAN Party EVO Mini has AMD Radeon HD 6870 new cards, while WAKM used a 1 GB Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 cards. WAKM used the Zotac board with integrated Wi-Fi, while the Cyber-Power goes out for a Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 table.

The real tragedy here is the choice of processor. Both platforms use mini Intel chips, but had incredible WAKM 2.93 GHz Core i7-870 quad-core CyberPower chooses an i5-655k. K indicates that the chip is unlocked to support overclocking, and takes CyberPower advantage of that by pushing the chip up to 4.32GHz. For the 655K, which has been publicly overclocked to 5GHz, it’s no stretch. We didn’t overclock the proc in our own mini because the stock LGA1156 cooler isn’t the greatest for that purpose. CyberPower overcomes its rig’s thermal limitations by somehow stuffing an Asetek 550LC into the tiny chassis.

Despite the overclocking, we were pretty sure that the ass kicking machine Wee prevail. With 120 GB SSD and quadcore without a doubt the EVO Mini LAN party would dust, right? Falsehood.

Although LAN Party EVO Mini is ranked second in three of our benchmarks, it has actually managed to defeat the Wee Ass Kicking machines in the two benchmarks and attach it to another. A quick look at our reference table will tell you what happened: In multithreaded applications, where multi-core issue, the EVO Mini LAN Party loses 16 to 17 percent. The three applications that do not work win or draw the two additional cores in WAKM, which gives the clocks high on the advantage of mini-LAN Party EVO. Reference points in the game, STALKER CyberPower lost, but his lead until he presses the clock before Far Cry 2. For most, this is a random reference.

Please note, we take care of the desktop standard benchmark at 2560x1600 to stress the Super-car game. This is one of the GPU, a sub-$ 1500 boxes, not the best representation of the resolution, which many people are playing. In other words, it's 1920x1080, both machines can throw almost anything would be today.

In the end, CyberLink Power Lan Party Mini EVO is a sweet, small, compact plant. It 'also a time for a tasty, at $ 1.250 a discount on our beautiful WAKM, which tilt the scale of $ 1,653. So, it's cheaper, almost to the performance, and still is water cooled. Our book, you win. Read More...